Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

SS42 American Fisheries Society/ASLO Joint Session: Scaling Fisheries From Egg to Adult and Back Again (Spatial and Temporal Connections)

Date: Wednesday, February 14, 2001, Time: 3:00:00 PM

Location: Sandia/Santa Ana

Natunewicz, C, C, University of Delaware, Lewes, DE, USA, cecilyn@udel.edu

Epifanio, C, E, University of Delaware, Lewes, DE, USA, epi@udel.edu

Garvine, R, W, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA, rgarvine@udel.edu

SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL SCALES OF CRAB LARVAL PATCHES

It is generally believed that meroplanktonic organisms like fish and crustacean larvae have distributions that are aggregated in space and that these aggregations constitute discrete patches. In spite of the general acceptance of this idea, there has been little documentation of the actual occurrence of these patches. Moreover, there is little information on the typical dimensions of patches, the typical duration of patches, or how the size of patches varies with species or geographical location. In this paper we present results of recent studies of the spatial and temporal scales of crab larvae in coastal waters of the Middle Atlantic Bight along the east coast of the USA. Patches of the newly hatched blue crab larvae (Callinectes sapidus) ranged from 0.5 - 2.5 km in both the alongshelf and across-shelf directions and remained cohesive for at least 6 d. We analyze these results in terms of physical and biological factors that control formation and dissipation of patches. In addition, we describe a numerical modeling approach to this type of analysis.

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Aquatic Sciences Meeting, Albuquerque 2001

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